Syria on Tuesday insisted that it had not dropped a demand that Israel stick to a promise said to have been made by late prime minister Yitzhak Rabin to abandon all Syrian land under any peace treaty. The official Syrian news agency (SANA) quoted an official source as saying that by reiterating its insistence on the so-called "Rabin deposit", Damascus was not setting preconditions for resuming peace talks with Israel.
| "No, no, certainly not! It's just unacceptable, that's all." |
 Efforts to revive the talks, broken off in 2000, appeared to gain momentum when United Nations special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen said last week that President Bashar al-Assad was willing to resume negotiations with Israel "without conditions".
| I'd take that to mean "starting from scratch." But then, I'm not an Arab. |
"A Syrian official source emphasised that the Syrian position is fixed vis-a-vis the resumption of peace talks and building on what has been accomplished, including the (Rabin) deposit," SANA said.
| So they lied. They're not willing to talk without conditions. |
The "Rabin deposit" is the diplomatic term for the Syrian insistence, contested by many Israelis, that Rabin promised full withdrawal from Syrian territory in any final peace agreement with Syria. Earlier on Tuesday, an Egyptian official said after talks between Assad and President Hosni Mubarak that Damascus no longer insisted on the "deposit". Israeli officials contend that any offer by Rabin was conditional and hypothetical, designed only to test what the Syrians were prepared to offer in return. On Monday, Egypt offered to mediate between Israel and Syria and said the subject could be raised in talks on Tuesday between Assad and Mubarak. But Egypt played the offer down after Assad met Mubarak, saying the process did not require mediation "because Israel knows fully what is required". In Beirut, Lebanon's official news agency said Assad had told his Lebanese counterpart Emile Lahoud by telephone that Syria still insisted that Israeli-Arab peace must be based on UN Security council resolutions 242 and 338, and that peace talks must resume where they left off.
| Looks like the Israelis can wait a while, wonder if Assad can? |
|